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Profile

I enjoy instigating fairly complex and unpredictable interactions through my activities as teacher, violinist/violist, conductor, composer, and writer, and feel that each aspect of my work is informed and enhanced by the others. My current concerns are centered on exploration of the ways in which music is formed out of time and memory, the practice of music as an essential part of life (as contrasted with “lifestyle”), and finding ways to teach others how to navigate through their own unique musical lives.

As a violinist, I have given more than a hundred first performances and championed music by a wide range of composers from John Cage to Eric Moe, Kwabena Nketia and Tison Street to Judith Weir and Christian Wolff. Recordings as violinist, composer and conductor are available on the Truemedia, Albany, Centaur, and Koch International Classics labels. My version of John Cage’s Thirteen Harmonies for violin and keyboard instrument is published by C.F.Peters. My coaching and conducting repertoire encompasses the history of ensemble music from Guillaume de Machaut up to the present.

My works have been performed throughout the world by such soloists and ensembles as cellists David Russell and Lawrence Stomberg, kayagum artist Heesun Kim, violinist Nathalie Shaw, flutist Lindsey Goodman, pianists Robert Frankenberry, Eric Moe and Bennett Lerner, guitarists John Muratore and James Marron, and The Furious Band, California E.A.R. Unit, IonSound Project and Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. Recent works include vioentelechron for violin and orchestra, at the piano in honor of favorite pianists, Akron Chronogram for large orchestra with video by Laura Ruth Bidwell commissioned by the Akron Symphony Orchestra, Christopher Wilkins, music director, to celebrate its 6oth anniversary, and a chamber music version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which can be performed in a range of settings from concert to theater. I am also a founding core faculty member of the MFA in Music Composition at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

About the Department

The Department of Music is part of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences of the University of Pittsburgh. The department serves the University's undergraduate student body, music majors and music minors, and...